by Barbara Hawkins Hiatt, daughter of Ruth Lindholm Hawkins, and granddaughter of Sarah Agnes Adams Lindholm
This story could be titled “Ruth’s Friend Pearl” [not her real name], or “The Smallpox Epidemic in Iona,” or “Serving with Faith.” They could be three separate stories; however, they all tie together.
My mother, Ruth Lindholm Hawkins was an “innocent” who saw only the best in people. As far as I recall, she never made a critical comment about anyone. I think she never even had a serious negative thought about anyone, choosing instead to think the best of people.
Sometimes when Mama would be telling stories of her childhood, she would mention her friend Pearl. Pearl was perfect. Pearl had beautiful clothes that weren’t homemade because her parents owned the store in town. Pearl’s hair was always arranged perfectly because she was an only child, and her mother had lots to time to devote to her. Pearl had beautiful dolls and wonderful toys because she was so special that Santa Claus came to her not only on Christmas Eve but on New Year’s Eve to bring the things he forgot or didn’t have room for on his first trip. Pearl always had fun ideas for things to do that sometimes stretched the limits of what was acceptable, but being with Pearl was exciting.
Even my children hearing these stories when they were small could recognize that Pearl was not perfect. They commented that she was like Nellie Oleson, a selfish spoiled brat of a character in “The Little House on the Prairie” TV series. But Mama never had anything negative to say about Pearl except possibly that Pearl never had the opportunity to learn to share because she had no brothers or sisters.
After Mama and her friends had grown up and married, Daddy took her back to her home town of Iona, Idaho, for a visit. One of the things Mama wanted to do was visit Pearl. They were having a great time reminiscing about old times when Pearl said, “Ruth, do you remember when nearly everyone in town but your family got smallpox? I was so jealous of you that whenever a scab would come off, I’d stand in my bedroom window and flick the scab into the air and say ‘Go get Ruth.’ ”
Mama said, “I can tell you why we didn’t get smallpox.” Then she proceeded to tell Pearl the following experience of her mother, Sarah Agnes Adams Lindholm.
Many people in Iona were stricken with smallpox, and the Relief Society President came to Ruth’s mother, a widow with several small children, and asked her to take care of a very sick family who needed help with meals, laundry, bathing the children, etc. My grandmother said, “I’m alone. Who will take care of my family if I bring smallpox home with me?” The Relief Society President promised her that if she would accept this assignment in faith, her family would be safe from smallpox if, when she arrived home, she would take off her apron, shoes and stockings outside on the porch and unpin her hair and shake it out before she entered the house. The Lindholm family never contracted smallpox.
I think of the faith of my grandmother, Sarah Agnes Adams Lindholm, whenever I’ve been asked to take an assignment that seems hard.